A female entrepreneur has criticised London Tech Week after she was refused entry for bringing her eight-month-old daughter to the event, prompting calls for the tech industry to modernise its approach to inclusion and caregiving.
Davina Schonle, founder of the start-up Humanvantage AI, said she felt “humiliated” after being turned away at the entrance to the flagship event at London Olympia on Monday. Schonle had travelled three hours to attend and had arranged multiple meetings with potential suppliers. She was reportedly turned away alongside another mother with an 18-month-old child.
“It was more than inconvenient. It was a clear reminder that as a tech industry, we still have work to do when it comes to inclusion beyond buzzwords,” Schonle posted on LinkedIn.
Organised by Informa, a FTSE 100 company, London Tech Week is billed as a global gathering of the brightest minds in technology. Yet the decision to exclude mothers attending with babies has sparked a wave of criticism in a sector already under scrutiny for its lack of diversity and support for female founders.
In response, a spokesperson for London Tech Week said: “We’re aware that one of our attendees wasn’t allowed to enter with their child. As a business event, the environment hasn’t been designed to incorporate the particular needs, facilities and safeguards that under-16s require. We’ve reached out directly to the person involved to discuss what happened and to inform how we approach this at LTW in the future.”
Schonle, however, said she had not received a personal reply by Tuesday afternoon, and noted that her LinkedIn post had attracted support from other parents and industry leaders.
Rachel Carrell, founder of childcare agency Koru Kids, commented: “Thirty years ago, this exact debate was happening in law firms and parliament. And here we are in tech, claiming to be the vanguard but still failing at the basics. If parliament can make room for babies, so can London Tech Week.”
Florence Bavanandan, head of platform at Launch Africa Ventures, added: “This systematic exclusion of parents — but let’s face it, mothers — is unacceptable.” She recalled appearing on stage at the same venue last year with her six-week-old baby, stating that Olympia is “completely accessible” and includes baby feeding rooms.
Jennifer Davidson, founder of Sleek Events, which runs large corporate gatherings for clients including AWS and Bacardi, called on organisers to design events “with empathy – recognising that our attendees are whole people, with responsibilities beyond the badge they wear.”
The controversy comes as UK data shows persistent inequality in tech entrepreneurship. According to Beauhurst, just 1.8% of the £8 billion of UK equity investment raised in the first half of 2024 went to all-female founding teams, compared with over 86% for all-male teams.
Schonle, a member of the University of Warwick’s Deep Tech Incubator, said the experience had brought “all my worst fears about being a woman in tech into sharp focus” and urged the industry to do better.
“I wasn’t there for a social visit,” she said. “I was there to do business.”
